The earthquakes which struck Nepal’s capital in 2015 were humanitarian disasters. Not only did they inflict tragic loss of life and livelihoods, they also destroyed parts of the Kathmandu Valley’s unique UNESCO World Heritage site. These monuments were not just ornate structures but living monuments playing central roles in the daily lives of thousands, representing portals where the heavens touch earth and people commune with guiding deities. Their rehabilitation was also of economic importance as they represent a major source of (...) tourist income and employment. Unfortunately, the social and political desire for rapid reconstruction resulted in the swift removal of many traditionally constructed foundations and their replacement with modern materials without assessments of whether they contributed towards the collapse of individual monuments. These actions, combined with the wholesale removal, mixing and dumping of modern and historic debris, contributed to a second, equally destructive, cultural catastrophe – irreversible damage to Kathmandu’s Medieval fabric, in a process which frequently excluded local communities and custodians. This case study draws from our collective reflections and lessons learned from our attempts to enable equitable and ethical research partnerships between UK and Nepali colleagues as well as local communities in the debris of the Kasthamandap, Kathmandu’s eponymous monument. After briefly describing the potential of mobilising archaeologists in post-disaster contexts and outlining the challenges of undertaking research in such a setting, our case study utilises the TRUST Code to assess the character and success of our multidisciplinary collaboration in a time of crises. (shrink)

Background Ethical conflict is a problem with negative consequences, which can compromise the quality and ethical standards of the nursing profession and it is a source of stress for health care practitioners’, especially for nurses. Objectives The main aim of this study was to analyze Spanish critical care nurses’ level of exposure to ethical conflict and its association with sociodemographic, occupational, and COVID-19–related variables. Research Design, Participants, and Research context: This was a quantitative cross-sectional descriptive study conducted among 117 nurses (...) working in critical care units. Data collection tools were sociodemographic, occupational, and COVID-19–related questionnaires and previously validated Spanish version of Ethical Conflict in Nursing Questionnaire-Critical Care Version. Ethical Considerations We obtained permission from the Ethics Committee and participants' informed consent. Findings Data indicates a moderate level of exposure to ethical conflicts. The most frequent ethical conflicts were related to situations about "treatment and clinical procedures." The most intensity of ethical conflicts was related to situations about "treatment and clinical procedures" and "dynamics of the service and working environment." No statistical significance was identified between the socio-demographic variables and level of exposure to ethical conflicts. However, for critical care nurses working in ICU, nurses with perceived worked stress had a higher level of exposure to ethical conflicts. Likewise, critical care nurses whose family/friends were infected with COVID-19 had a higher level of exposure. Conclusions Critical care nurses experience a moderate level of exposure to ethical conflicts which is consistent with the results of previous studies. A deeper understanding of ethical conflicts in conflictive situations allows recognition of the situations that occur in everyday clinical practice, identification of the ethical conflicts, and facilitation of the nurses working in the challenging clinical situation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.1 (2000) 25-48 [Access article in PDF] Postcolonialism's Archive Fever Sandhya Shetty and Elizabeth Jane Bellamy Jacques Derrida. Archive Fever. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. ________. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1976. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 271-313. (...) 1. Reading the Subaltern Archivally--or, Back to Antiquity Many readers of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" have been disturbed by Spivak's controversial answer to her own question, which is that "no scene of speaking" can arise for the subaltern woman; no discursive space can emerge from which she could formulate an "utterance." 1 One way of rephrasing Gayatri Spivak's highly resonant question might be, Can there be such a thing as a "postcolonial archive"? The purpose of our essay is to demonstrate just how crucial the concept of an "archive"--perhaps even a "postcolonial archive"--is for a more sympathetic understanding of Spivak's now notorious "silencing" of the subaltern woman. The underread and scarcely commented-on third and fourth sections of Spivak's essay raise the question, Can we approach the gendered subaltern more productively if our project is to recover not "lost voices" but rather lost texts? In the process of unpacking the textual complexities underlying Britain's 1829 abolition of sati (the widow's self-immolation on her husband's funeral pyre), Spivak pushes us further back in time when she observes intriguingly that "the archival... work involved here is indeed a task of 'measuring silences'" [286, our emphasis]. 2 We contend that her [End Page 25] choice of the term "archival" is highly motivated and can serve as the long-overdue occasion for a return to the largely unread sections of "Can the Subaltern Speak?"We can think of at least two risks involved in our undertaking. For one thing, revisitations to well-known essays can often seem more regressive than innovative. We are well aware that we may have to overcome a certain indifference on the part of readers who, feeling confident that they know it well, judge that "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (now over ten years old) has had its theoretical "moment" and should now give way to more current efforts to locate nonelite, subaltern subjectivity within a politics of resistance. A second concern is that because our project of reading the subaltern woman "archivally" must necessarily reexamine and justify Spivak's career-long engagement with Derrida and with deconstruction, we must be aware of the extent to which her deconstructive feminism has been prematurely and unfairly associated with the supposed political shortcomings of Derridean deconstruction, the regrettable result being an almost reflex aversion to her deconstructive theory within both feminism and postcolonialism. Despite these risks, however, we hope that our use of the archive as the governing principle for our return to Spivak's essay can pave the way for a more sympathetic reading of Spivak's "silent" subaltern. Our essay will argue that "Can the Subaltern Speak?" deserves a foundational or canonical status within postcolonial theory and should experience a "staying power" on the current critical scene as far-reaching and significant as Edward Said's Orientalism.Spivak's essay at one point refers quite literally to the concept of an archive, that is, the colonial "archive" of the East India Company, consisting of the "correspondence among the police stations, the lower and higher courts, the courts of directors, the prince regent's court," and so on [298]--all the documents instrumental in British law's recodification of sati from "ritual" to "crime" (also, we might add, the archive of subaltern historiography). 3 However, as Foucault's concept of the archive reminds us, the [End Page 26] archive is not just "that whole mass of texts that belong to a single discursive [in this case, legal] formation," but can also be conceptualized more abstractly as the "law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events... (shrink)

This paper explores the critical roles of researchers in research involving vulnerable populations. Its purpose is to reflect on the complex nature of vulnerability of Bhutanese refugee women who had resettled in Australia involved in research looking at the barriers to accessing preventive cancer screening. First, we describe the vulnerabilities considered prior to the research study and the actions taken to protect participants while the study was conducted. Second, we discuss those vulnerabilities that we did not anticipate, but were subsequently (...) revealed during the study and consequently included in the study findings. These vulnerabilities should be considered for future research involving similar populations. It is important for researchers to use appropriate research designs that enable the voice of vulnerable people to be heard and to use research strategies that ensure findings are robust and participants are protected and empowered. Potential implications include the development of research practices that take account of the sources of vulnerabilities and consideration of how different vulnerabilities can evolve and affect findings and research recommendations. (shrink)

Contributed papers presented at International Conference on The Contribution of Advaita Vedanta to Humanity organized by Chinmaya International Foundation Shodha Sansthan in 2015.

JIPs are JNK interacting proteins and bind to JNK cascade kinases. JIP1 and JIP3 were known to be adaptors linking cargo to Kinesin‐I, a major molecular motor for axonal transport. Recent research sheds further light on JIPs' complex roles in axonal transport, namely in activation of Kinesin‐I and in cargo release. In Drosophila, APLIP1/JIP1 allows the Kinesin‐I complex to enable cargo release through activation of JNK signaling.1 In mammalian cell culture, JIP1 is necessary and, together with UNC‐76/FEZ1, sufficient for activating (...) Kinesin‐I.2 I discuss and compare the many roles played by JIP1 and JIP3 through interactions with several distinct players, in retrograde as well as anterograde transport. BioEssays 30:10–14, 2008. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Aphoristic work on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika school of Hindu philosophy; Sanskrit auto commentary with Hindi interpretation and translation.

We return to Derrida's 1974 Glas. It has probably never occurred to readers of Glas that it could have relevance for any kind of critique of empire - let alone a critique of empire via the Mediterranean. But Braudel's investigation of the difficult question of the `historical Mediterranean' is precisely the lens through which Glas's nascent critique of imperialism comes into focus. In this strange work, a `thinking' of passages emerges - disruptive passages moving from west to east, ceaselessly criss-crossing (...) the vectors of the western empire's seemingly `continuous' move westward. As a rigorous critique of origins and borders, Derridean deconstruction can provide a useful perspective on ongoing efforts to pinpoint the borders of a `historical Mediterranean' and on the ways in which medieval mercantile histories of the Mediterranean themselves serve as a critique of empire. (shrink)

Misophonia has been characterized as intense negative reactions to specific trigger sounds. However, recent research suggests high-level, contextual, and multisensory factors are also involved. We recently demonstrated that neurotypicals’ negative reactions to aversive sounds are attenuated when the sounds are synced with positive attributable video sources. To assess whether this effect generalizes to misophonic triggers, we developed a Sound-Swapped Video database for use in misophonia research. In Study 1, we created a set of 39 video clips depicting common trigger sounds (...) and a corresponding set of 39 PAVS temporally synchronized with the OVS videos. In Study 2, participants rated the 39 PAVS videos for their audiovisual match and pleasantness. We selected the 20 PAVS videos with best match scores for use in Study 3. In Study 3, a new group of participants observed the 20 selected PAVS and 20 corresponding OVS and judged the pleasantness or unpleasantness of each sound in the two contexts accompanying each video. Afterward, participants completed the Misophonia Questionnaire. The results of Study 3 show a robust attenuating effect of PAVS videos on the reported unpleasantness of trigger sounds: trigger sounds were rated as significantly less unpleasant when paired with PAVS with than OVS. Moreover, this attenuating effect was present in nearly every participant regardless of their score on the MQ. In fact, we found a moderate positive correlation between the PAVS-OVS difference and misophonia severity scores. Overall our results provide validation that the SSV database is a useful stimulus database to study how misophonic responses can be modulated by visual contexts. Here, we release the SSV database with the best 18 PAVS and 18 OVS videos used in Study 3 along with aggregate ratings of audio-video match and pleasantness. We also provide detailed instructions on how to produce these videos, with the hope that this database grows and improves through collaborations with the community of misophonia researchers. (shrink)

Compendium of Advaita school in Hindu philosophy with Naiṣkarmyasiddhicandrikā by Jñānottama Miśra and Sandhyā-Sudhā Hindi commentaries.

This article examines the structures of the epico-Purāṇic divisions of time (yugas/sandhyās/kalpas) and asks what is joined by the Purāṇic ages known as yugas or joinings. It concludes that these structures reflect a combining of three systems of number—Greek acrophonic, Babylonian sexagesimal and Hindu decimal— represented as divisions of time. Since most interpretations of these structures, particularly yugas, focus on questions of dharma and its decline over the various ages rather than on number, it asks in conclusion if there is (...) any necessary relationship between number and dharma. (shrink)

Can nature be restored to a pristine state through deliberate action? Must the preservation of wilderness always subordinate the interests of humans to those of other species? Can indigenous peoples be entrusted with the guardianship of their own wild resources? This collection of international writings tackles tough questions like these as it expands wilderness conservation beyond its American roots. One of the first anthologies to consider wilderness as a global issue, it takes a stand against the notion that wilderness is (...) a northern colonialist conceit and is irrelevant to the plans of third world countries. Contributions from all over the planetÑ Nepal, Borneo, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, South Africa, India, and the United StatesÑ show instead that wilderness has an important place in the environmental thought and policy of any nation, industrial or developing. The World and the Wild boldly advances the idea that our concept of wilderness must expand to take in new vistas. It breaks fresh ground in global environmentalism and is essential reading for anyone concerned with development issues related to conservation. Contents Foreword: Whither World Wilderness? / Vance G. Martin Introduction: Wilderness in the Rest of the World / David Rothenberg How Can Four Trees Make a Jungle? / Pramod Parajuli The Unpaintable West / Zeese Papanikolas Restoring Wilderness or Reclaiming Forests? / Sahotra Sarkar For Indian Wilderness / Philip Cafaro and Monish Verma In the Dust of Kilimanjaro / David Western Why Conservation in the Tropics Is Failing / John Terborgh "Trouble in Paradise": An Exchange / David Western and John Terborgh Zulu History / Ian Player Bruno Manser and the Penan / William W. Bevis Roads Where There Have Long Been Trails / Kathleen Harrison Volcano Dreams / Tom Vanderbilt Recycled Rain Forest Myths / Antonio Carlos Diegues The Park of Ten Thousand Waterfalls / Dan Imhoff Mapping the Wild / Edward A. Whitesell Earth Jazz / Evan Eisenberg They Trampled on Our Taboos / Damien Arabagali. (shrink)